360 degrees Performance Appraisal mostly can do away with biased approach while assessing an employee. Do you agree with the above statement. Give your views.

Q. 360 degrees Performance Appraisal mostly can do away with biased approach while assessing an employee. Do you agree with the above statement. Give your views.

Ans. Yes, it is true that 360 degrees of Performance Appraisal can do away with biased approach while assessing an employee. The appraiser may be any person who has thorough knowledge about the job content, contents to be appraised, standards of contents and who observes the employee while performing a job. The appraiser should be capable of determining what is more important and what is relatively less important. He should prepare reports and make judgements without bias. Typical appraisers are supervisors, peers, subordinates, employees themselves, user of service and customers. Performance appraisal by all these parties is called 360 degree performance appraisal. Pond’s, General Electric, Hindustan Lever Limited. Grasim, Colgate – Palmolive, Hewett Packard, practice 360 degree performance appraisal.  Appraisal is an appraisal which is an appraisal which is an unbiased way of appraisal and is conducted.

Here the performance appraisal is not just done across the table. In this technique the employee is observed while performing a job.  A report is done by the appraiser based on what he has observed. These are facts that cannot be disputed by either the appraiser or employee. This kind of appraisal is more performance and result based. There is no room for manipulation of performance on paper by the appraiser. Hence the appraiser cannot be biased or favour the employee he wishes too. Secondly it involves the opinion of other too, like peers, other employees, the employee himself etc. It is not the report of just one person who could be biased otherwise.

The whole process of a 360 degree appraisal is discussed as under:

Supervisors: Supervisors include superiors of the employee, other superiors having knowledge about the work of the employee and department head or manager. General practice is that immediate superior appraises the performance which in turn is reviewed by the departmental head/manager.

Peers: Peer appraisal may be reliable if the work group is stable over a reasonably long period of time and performs tasks that require interaction. However, little research has been conducted to determine how peers establish standards for evaluating others or the overall effect of peer appraisal on the group’s attitude.

Subordinates: The concept of having superiors rated by subordinates is being used in most organizations today, especially in developed countries. Such a novel method can be useful in other organizational settings too provided the relationships between superiors and subordinates are cordial.

Self Appraisal: If individuals understand the objectives they are expected to achieve and the standards by which they are to be evaluated, they are to a great extend in the best position to appraise their own performance. Also since employee’s development means self development, employees who appraise their own performance may become highly motivated. Thermax, escorts, Wipro etc implement self appraisal.

Users of Services/Customers: Employee performance in service organizations relating to behaviours, promptness, speed in doing the job and accuracy can be better judged by the customer or users of services. For eg. Teacher’s performance is better judged by students and performance of a doctor is judged by patients.

Consultants: Sometimes consultants may be engaged for appraisal when employees or employers do not trust supervisor appraisal and the management does not trust self appraisal, peer appraisal or subordinate appraisal. In this situation, consultants are trained and they observe the employee at work for a sufficiently long time for the purpose of appraisal.